With Mobile World Congress just days away, last week’s 5G landscape was dominated by pre-MWC positioning from the industry’s largest vendors, fresh data on the global state of 5G Standalone, and a clutch of significant market developments. From a heated debate over AI architecture philosophy to milestone deployments in Belgium and Spain, the week offered a clear sense of where the industry is heading — and where it still has ground to cover.
The most consequential strategic story of the week centred on a fundamental disagreement between the two largest Western telecom vendors over how artificial intelligence should be integrated into the radio access network. At a pre-MWC briefing in London, Ericsson made clear it believes AI-RAN is achievable without GPU processors, instead backing its own purpose-built silicon and custom neural network accelerators embedded in new radio units. The Swedish vendor is targeting “silicon freedom” — the ability to run its software across multiple hardware platforms — while resisting the kind of chip dependency it perceives in Nokia’s arrangement with Nvidia.
Nokia, by contrast, has aligned firmly with Nvidia, having accepted investment and announced plans to co-develop 5G and 6G RAN software optimised for Nvidia’s GPUs. The divergence is significant: as analyst Sebastian Barros noted, both approaches cannot simultaneously be correct, and the outcome will shape the latter stages of 5G and the foundations of 6G. Industry observers, including Disruptive Analysis founder Dean Bubley, were broadly supportive of Ericsson’s more cautious approach to edge compute, noting that agentic AI workloads are better placed near cloud on-ramps than at the cell site. The debate is unlikely to be resolved before MWC 2027 at the earliest.
Separately, Ericsson used the same London event to launch its rApp as a Service offering on AWS compute, enabling network intelligence applications to be delivered from the AWS marketplace via the open R1 interface. The company also outlined plans to co-locate its user plane function (UPF) with Cloud RAN on a single server alongside AI inference workloads — a move it described as a footprint-efficient approach to delivering AI services at the network edge.
A joint report from Ookla and Omdia, the second annual edition of their 5G Standalone study, painted a nuanced picture of global SA progress. By the end of 2025, 5G SA accounted for 17.6% of Speedtest samples globally — roughly one in six 5G connections — up from 16.2% the previous year. The global median SA download speed of 269 Mbps represents a 52% premium over non-standalone networks, but the headline figure masks pronounced regional divergence.
The Gulf Cooperation Council has established itself as the unambiguous global leader. Operators e& and du drove GCC median download speeds to 1.13 Gbps in Q4 2025, nearly five times the European median of 205 Mbps. The UAE alone recorded 1.24 Gbps — comparable to full-fibre broadband performance in developed markets. The US has completed nationwide SA deployment across all Tier-1 operators, with median speeds of 404 Mbps. Europe is accelerating, but from a low base: Austria (8.7%), Spain (8.3%), the UK (7%) and France (5.9%) account for most SA connections on the continent, yet the region still trails North America by 27 percentage points in availability. The capability gap — rooted in spectrum allocation, carrier aggregation deployment and user-plane engineering decisions — is widening even as the coverage gap narrows.
A real-world user trial of EE’s 5G SA service in London, conducted by Omdia’s Gabriel Brown, added a consumer dimension to the data. Brown found EE’s SA network to be consistent, reliable and well-suited to everyday applications, with contiguous midband coverage across inner London and strong Voice over NR performance on low-band 700 MHz indoors. He noted that in a blind comparison, a user would struggle to distinguish SA from NSA on the basis of experience alone — but observed that EE now has the baseline in place to build a genuine network platform for new services and business models.
Data from Dell’Oro Group confirmed that the mobile core network market is in robust health. Global MCN revenue grew 15% year-on-year in 2025 — its highest growth rate since 2014 — with 5G core reaching 50% of total MCN revenues for the first time. All four major vendors (Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia and ZTE) recorded strong growth while maintaining similar combined market share. Multi-access edge computing was the fastest-growing subsegment, with China leading deployments. Dell’Oro also highlighted the potential impact of agentic AI in driving additional core capacity requirements over the next three to five years, flagging this as both a network challenge and a monetisation opportunity for operators.
A landmark deployment illustrated how new business models are beginning to reshape core network economics. Belgian operator Citymesh has gone live with what Nokia and AWS describe as the world’s first commercial mobile service delivered via 5G Core Software-as-a-Service. Running Nokia’s Core SaaS for Business on AWS global cloud infrastructure, Citymesh is using the platform to serve enterprises across venues, airports, hospitals, offshore environments, transport and first responders — without the capital intensity and integration complexity of traditional network builds. The subscription-based, pay-as-you-grow model is a meaningful proof point for operators seeking to reduce upfront investment whilst retaining flexibility to scale.
In Canada, Videotron selected Samsung to supply its 5G core network technology, continuing Samsung’s expansion across North America following earlier wins with T-Mobile and DISH Network. The deal supports Videotron’s ambition to offer enterprise 5G services, including network slicing, as it competes with larger national operators.
After losing approximately one-fifth of its value between 2022 and 2024, the global RAN market stabilised in the second half of 2025, according to Dell’Oro. The research firm expects stable conditions to persist until 6G investment cycles begin, likely from 2029 onwards. Open RAN was assessed as likely to play a role in the second half of 5G; Cloud RAN was rated as less likely to have a major impact; and multi-vendor RAN was described as unlikely to be significant at the start of the 6G era.
Within this stabilised market, Huawei and Nokia gained share in 2025, Ericsson and Samsung held steady, and ZTE’s revenue share declined. Huawei’s gains were concentrated in regions with fewer restrictions — parts of Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America — reflecting its continued investment in 5G RAN technology in markets where it faces no security-related prohibitions.
French private 5G specialist Firecell and Belgian Open RAN vendor Accelleran announced a merger backed by €7.9 million from investors including Matterwave Ventures, BPI France and Qbic. The combined company will operate under the Firecell name and offer a pre-integrated private 5G platform combining Firecell’s 5G core and network management system with Accelleran’s CU/DU stack and RAN Intelligent Controller. The merged entity is positioning itself explicitly as a sovereign European alternative in the private 5G supply chain — 100% European-developed software deployable fully on-premises, targeting sectors such as defence and critical infrastructure. The deal reflects growing demand from industrial operators for simplified, single-vendor-equivalent private 5G solutions as deployments evolve from single-site pilots to multi-site rollouts.
MasOrange and Ericsson confirmed the rollout of 5G Advanced capabilities across 20 Spanish cities, including Madrid and Barcelona, building on MasOrange’s existing 5G SA network. The deployment introduces RedCap (Reduced Capability) radios to broaden IoT device support, and L4S (Low Latency, Low Loss, Scalable Throughput) for time-critical applications including AR/VR and cloud gaming. Voice over NR is also being rolled out nationally. The deployment marks Spain’s entry into the 5G Advanced era and signals the next wave of commercial opportunity in network slicing, XR and mobility automation.
India’s Communications Minister confirmed the country’s 5G rollout is on course to reach 1 billion subscribers by 2031. With 500,000 base stations already deployed and 5G now covering 99.9% of districts, India’s trajectory — achieving nationwide coverage within 22 months of commercial launch — is among the fastest globally. Ericsson projects 394 million Indian 5G users by end of 2026, rising to 1 billion by 2031.
Ericsson also reported maritime 5G SA trials as part of a broader push into defence and mission-critical markets, testing the technology’s performance in naval environments where coverage consistency and resilience are paramount. The company expects defence and government to be a meaningful growth segment in 2026 and beyond.
On the use-case frontier, Telefónica Tech announced it will demonstrate 5G-connected autonomous aquatic drones at MWC 2026, designed to collect marine litter and monitor ocean conditions in real time. The showcase illustrates how 5G’s low latency and high bandwidth are enabling a new generation of connected devices that address environmental challenges.
From Africa, Vodacom Tanzania reported 19.8% service revenue growth, driven by mobile data and M-Pesa financial services. Although 5G has not yet launched commercially in Tanzania, the operator’s financial trajectory underscores the continent’s appetite for mobile connectivity investment. Finally, industry association 5G Americas announced it will dissolve operations on 27 February 2026, after more than two decades advocating for spectrum policy, network standards and technology adoption across the Americas — a sign of the maturation of both the technology and the companies that once needed coordinated advocacy to advance it.
Ericsson does AI-RAN minus Nvidia in push for 5G silicon freedom
A detailed account of Ericsson’s pre-MWC strategy to keep AI-RAN independent of GPU processors, with implications for the entire vendor ecosystem through the 5G and 6G eras.
https://www.lightreading.com/5g/ericsson-does-ai-ran-minus-nvidia-in-push-for-5g-silicon-freedom
Ookla and Omdia deliver 5G SA reality check
The second annual joint report maps the widening capability gap between the GCC, North America and Europe, and charts where monetisation opportunities are emerging on standalone networks.
https://www.mobileworldlive.com/5g/ookla-omdia-deliver-sa-5g-reality-check/
Citymesh goes live with world’s first commercial mobile service on 5G Core SaaS
Belgium’s Citymesh demonstrates how subscription-based 5G core delivery on cloud infrastructure can lower the barrier to entry for operators targeting enterprise markets.
https://www.telecomtv.com/content/5g/citymesh-launches-world-s-first-commercial-mobile-service-on-5g-core-saas-powered-by-nokia-and-aws-54887/
Firecell and Accelleran merge to build European private 5G stack for industry
The merger of two European specialists creates a sovereign, pre-integrated private 5G platform at a moment when industrial operators are demanding simplicity and single-source accountability at scale.
https://www.mobileeurope.co.uk/firecell-and-accelleran-merge-to-build-european-private-5g-stack-for-industry/
© 2026 Cenerva Ltd | All Rights Reserved | Terms
By providing your email address, you agree to receive relevant content from Cenerva. We will not rent or sell your information and you can unsubscribe at any time. Read more in our privacy policy.
